All sorts of stuff is happening on both coasts next week, including two big shows on Thanksgiving Day.

First - the most exciting show in years from my perspective: On Wednesday, the night before Thanksgiving, Danny Lozada will be at Yoshi's for two shows with a truly killer band and Septeto Nacional sitting in at the 10:00 show. His set list includes 4 songs from Tremendo delirio, 3 from Tanto le pedí and three strong newer originals, including La Habana a revés. Danny will also be sitting in at Jelly's with Ritmo y Armonía on Sunday evening.

Septeto Nacional has been selling out shows in New York and will be at Yoshi's San Francisco on Thanksgiving night and the three nights before that. On Wednesday, they play an 8:00 show and then zip across the bridge to join Danny's late show.

Meanwhile, in Miami, Tiempo Libre will be at Broward Center's Amaturo Theater in Fort Lauderdale.

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Here's the coolest feature of the new timba.com. If you look down and to the right, you'll see the "New Stuff" section (o "Lo nuevo" si estás en español).

Whenever anybody changes a page anywhere on timba.com it shows up here, so all you have to do is type www.timba.com, look in this box and you'll immediately know if anyone has added a tour date, an album review, a video, a photo gallery, a new club, a new music teacher, a new dance school, etc. Pretty cool, eh? You can also just click on the link to go to the newly edited page. You can also click "Next" to go back as far as you want through the additions of recent weeks.

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We now have two types of language buttons. The global button is located in the upper right hand corner of every page:

These buttons change the menus and other global text and also store the preference so that when a page is available in both languages, it displays in the one you've chosen. Of course, if an article is only available in one language, it always appears.

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At Moe's Alley. See you there.

UPDATE: They were on fire! Like a band from Cuba, the years of rehearsing and arranging have resulted in an overwhelming arsenal of gears and bloques. Murray Low has got that crazy Rolando Luna finger action going and I don't think I've heard any Cuban drummer play the snare drum more creatively than Carlos Caro who was completely off the hook tonight. Look for a photo gallery and maybe even a bit of video from Tom. His fancy new still camera actually takes better video than most dedicated videocams. Also, mark down Dec. 11 at Sweet's Ballroom in Oakland. Jesús didn't give too many details, but it sounds like a major event. This could be a great new Bay Area venue.

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